Spinoff titles usually allow exhausted developers to experiment with famous franchises or take risks most publishers wouldn’t ordinarily allow in a mainline title. While innovation can often serve as a shot in the arm for many stagnant series, it can also serve as another nail in the coffin of an already over-the-hill IP.
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Unfortunately, it seems like, when it comes to spinoff titles, there have been more negatives than positives. Almost every major gaming franchise has an offshoot title most fans choose to ignore, and here are ten of the most notoriously awful spinoff flops of all time, as per Metacritic.
10Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (Metascore 66)
Final Fantasyhas seen its fair share of controversial installments in its 30-odd year history, butLightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIIhas to be one of the most disliked by fans. There aren’t many RPG fans willing to defend theXIIIsaga, and many will agree thatLightning Returnsis its lowest point.
With an obnoxious seven-day countdown which forces Lightning to frequently pause and keep track of the course of time and a downright nonsensical story which concludes the subseries in the worst way possible, it’s not hard to see why theFinal Fantasyfaithful were eager to move past this mess.
9Silent Hill: Book of Memories (Metascore 58)
Farming theSilent Hilllicense out to a developer that clearly didn’t know what to do with it, Konami blatantly established that they didn’t care what happened to the series back in 2012. The product of their partnership with WayForward—now most well-known for theShanteseries—wasSilent Hill: Book of Memories, a procedurally-generated dungeon crawler that fundamentally misunderstood what madeSilent Hillso compelling in the first place.
This PlayStation Vita exclusive was monotonous, distinctly separate from the series' survival horror roots, and didn’t even take place in the eponymous fictional town. Unfortunately, this was the last we’ve seen of the franchise.
8Pokémon Channel (Metascore 55)
Pokémon Channelmust have been an incredible disappointment for young fans of the Japanese series during the GameCube era. A spiritual successor of sorts to the oft-deridedHey You, Pikachuon the Nintendo 64,Pokémon Channelisn’t so much a game as it is an interactive experience of sorts.
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Players spend their time hanging out with Pikachu and surfing throughPokémon-related TV channels, the best of which being an anime micro-series or aPokémon-themed quiz show and the worst consisting of a bizarre workout program featuring Smoochum and a strange series of news reports featuring Meowth. Steer clear unless you happen to be a hardcore collector of all things pocket monster.
7Metal Gear Survive (Metascore 54)
Perhaps one of the most infamous games to release during the eighth console generation,Metal Gear Survivewas Konami’s attempt to revitalize theMetal Gearfranchise following the departure of series creator Hideo Kojima. Throwing most of what made the proceeding games so memorable out the window and incorporating tons of dated, obnoxious survival mechanics,Metal Gear Survivefelt like a bastardization of the franchise and a stain on Kojima’s legacy.
Exactly what Konami plans to do withMetal Gearfollowing this failure is unknown, but most fans would likely rather have nothing at all than another monetized-to-hell-and-back dumpster fire like this.
6Sonic Free Riders (Metascore 47)
Woe be unto the Sonic fanbase. Releasing four years removed from the fantastically terrible 2006 reboot and in the midst of a torrent of equally terrible titles likeSonic and the Black KnightandSonic Unleashed,Sonic Free Ridersfelt like yet another reason to give up on the franchise entirely.
One of the most dysfunctional games in the history of the failed experiment that was the Kinect,Sonic Free Riderswas a racing game that was quite seriously more difficult to control than the notoriousSonic R. Featuring broken motion controls at their absolute finest, this title was yet another wound for an already grievously injured series.
5Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival (Metascore 46)
Longtime fans of theAnimal Crossingseries are undoubtedly looking forward to the upcomingNew Horizonsin March, but it’ll have to be pretty excellent in order to make up for the atrocity that was 2015’sAmiibo Festival.
A rip-off of the fabulously popularMario Partygames,Amiibo Festivalwas a paper-thin attempt at a tabletop-esque experience that essentially boiled down to an amiibo sales pitch. The figures were required to play, and the experience often felt like it began and ended with scanning Nintendo’s proprietary plastic statues. Perhaps a neat collectible for fans of the franchise today, there’s little actual incentive to play this game in 2020.
4Shadow the Hedgehog (Metascore 45)
Riding high on the relative success of theSonic Adventureseries, Sega saw fit to take a bit of a risk and center their next title around Shadow, their dark and decidedly T-rated new antihero. The result was an inferior take on theAdventureformula with some extra-cringy dialogue and gunplay that was as bewildering as it was difficult to control.
Though it featured a multitude of differing pathways and boasted a tremendous amount of replay value, few would want to see this saga through to the end on more than one occasion. Shadow the Hedgehog may have remained a popular character, but the same couldn’t be said about his game.
3Left Alive (Metascore 37)
TheFront Missionseries was a cult classic set of turn-based tactical titles that were tremendously more popular in Japan than they were in Western markets. Introducing some epic mech combat and some incredibly challenging gameplay, these games weren’t for everyone, though they carried an undeniable appeal for some.
Fast forward to 2019, and the near-dormant series received a reboot/spinoff in the form ofLeft Alive. Unfortunately, the new title more or less threw out everything that made the older games great and opted to brazenly rip off theMetal Gearseries. Yet, broken, monotonous, and outright annoying,Left Aliveonly succeeded in further insulting fans of both franchises.
2Umbrella Corps (Metascore 36)
Perhaps the strangest spinoff on this list,Umbrella Corpswas a bizarre spinoff of theResident Evilfranchise which placed a heavy emphasis on, of all things, tactical PvP combat. Initially marketed as an eSports-centric title, few fell for the marketing, and the title was heavily ridiculed from the get-go.
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Resident Evilfans aren’t usually the demographic to be enticed by an online-focused, fast-paced shooter, but that was the least ofUmbrella Corps' worries. Horribly balanced and featuring an insta-kill melee attack that essentially de-emphasized long-range weaponry, this monstrosity competes withOperation Raccoon CityandSurvivorfor the title of worstResident Evilgame of all time.
1Bomberman Act Zero (Metascore 34)
Often recognized as one of the worst spinoff games of all time, Konami, in their infinite wisdom, decided that, to coincide with the birth of a grittier, more mature generation of gaming, they would reboot theBombermanfranchise and give it a darker twist.
Mechanically messy and painfully ugly, even for the time,Bomberman Act Zerousually isn’t recommended as a genuineBombermantitle and left a serious black mark on an otherwise beloved library of games. Konami’s cutesy demolitions expert hasn’t seen much love in recent years, and this disaster may be partly to blame for that.
